LGCommunications is working in partnership with Panacea Software to conduct a short research piece in order to understand the impact of today’s budgetary pressures on public sector communications.

We would value your input in this this study, please click the link below to take part. Your response will directly inform LGCommunications’ on going work to raise the standard of communications in local government.

Devolution, channel shift, budget cuts – these are all hot topics in local government right now, and for comms professionals, how we communicate these to our public is an ongoing challenge.

It’s easy to get carried away as we, quite rightly, strive to be more and more innovative, but sometimes it helps to take a step back, and LGcomms is doing just that - going ‘Back to Basics’ to kick off its seminar season.

This year’s LGcomms and GCS Public Sector Academy is more important than ever before. This is our once-in-the-year chance as public sector comms professionals to really understand the changing landscape around us, share ideas and develop the skills that we need to survive.

To me, the communications frontline means meeting the tax paying public face-to-face.

It’s all very well dispatching our messages and orchestrating campaigns from the comfort of County Hall, but how often do we actually get out there and speak to the people they’re aimed at? Not often enough.

And while it may not be top of everyone’s bucket list, there’s nothing quite like slipping into a branded polo-neck and seeing the whites of the public’s eyes to remind you of what - and who - our job is all about.

In the narrow sense of this blog post, the EU referendum result is not important, apart from the parallels with local government of former political friends finding themselves on either side of the debate and now having to pick up the pieces.

Here, on the previously less contested Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire border, another little in/out drama has been playing out.

Cotswold and West Oxfordshire districts hatched a plan to create a new unitary in an idea the PM said ‘had a lot of merit’. Some local wag on the Cotswold side quickly dubbed the idea Coxit. When the cross-border idea proved too tricky to progress, our press statement hilariously described it as a ‘Coxit cock-up’.

The soundbite was duly picked up by the local BBC. Job done for the day. Or was it? Colleagues working in two tier areas will no doubt have their own experiences of local spats played out by media statement. Football pundits call it ‘handbags’. No blood spilt, but doesn’t do much for the reputation of the beautiful game.